Greetings chess players and fans of chess! I have decided to start teaching some basic concepts and ideas regarding chess here on The Art Of Chess blog page. These mini lessons will be included in my book "Punk Rock Chess" which I hope to have completed within the next three months.
We'll start our lessons with some basic strategies and tactics for the novice player. This serves as an introduction to the concepts needed to improve your game and certainly enjoy it more. We'll start with some basic concepts:
To play chess successfully requires careful planning and the consideration of each move you make. Think of it this way: If you want to get in your car and drive to a place you've never been to before, you have a couple of options. You can get in your car, start driving, and hope you arrive at your destination eventually. There's no planning involved in that decision. However, you're probably not going to get there and you'll waste a whole lot of gas in the process. The second option is to look at a map, make a plan or use some strategy in your efforts to get to the place you're going. This idea of mapping out a plan is what we call a strategy in chess.
You'll hear the word tactic a lot when reading chess literature. Tactics may seem like a foreign concept to some of you but the truth is, you use tactics every day of your lives. You start by using a map to guide you. This is your strategy. However, the map shows construction zones all over the place. Let's say there is construction on the road to the above mentioned place you're going. You use the map you downloaded from the internet, but when you get to the construction zone, you have a choice; you can go to the left of the construction zone or to the right. One way requires a small car to get through the narrow road, the other requires a car with all terrain tires. You think about the car your driving, realize it's small and without all terrain tires, so you take the narrow road. You have just made a tactical decision.
So in a general sense, a strategy is a game plan for the bigger picture. In chess your strategy is, for example, to control the central squares of the chess board and eventually checkmate the opponent's King. The way you achieve this goal is through the use of tactics. Tactics are solutions to the immediate problem, such as how to I capture the my opponent's pieces or how do I keep my opponent from capturing my pieces.
Therefore, when you sit down to play chess, you need to think about your strategy or your goal and have some knowledge of basic tactics. We'll start our examination of tactics in the next blog. For now I am going to give you so basic strategies to help you start your game successfully.
You'll hear a lot spoken about the opening. What is the opening or opening game? In it's simplest terms, it's the beginning moves of any chess game. This is where you apply your first strategies. There are countless books dedicated to the opening moves of chess and numerous names for these openings. We'll get into those much later on, but for now let's take a look at some basic opening principles that will help you in your most basic strategy: To successfully win a game of chess.
You here a lot about controlling the central squares of the chess board and how central control leads you along the road to victory. Why should you control the central four squares? Why not any other four squares on the board? As it turns out, many of the pieces you'll need to win the game do best when in the center of the board. The reason they do well at the center of the board is because the center of the board allows for the greatest amount of freedom or movement for these pieces. When we study basic tactics using the Knight we'll see that the old saying "a Knight on the rim is grim" holds true. The Knight especially needs to be in the center of the action to work his magic. The target squares in the center of the board are d4,d5,e4, and e5. The first pieces to reach these central squares are usually the pawns.
This brings us to piece development. There is an order in which you want to deploy your pieces. For beginners, the smartest (until you learn a bit more about the many types of openings) opening move is to bring out a King or Queen pawn (the pawn in front of the King or Queen). Why? Because it allows you to develop or bring out pieces such as your Knights and Bishops. As you can see in the example at the top of this page, White has moved the King's pawn to e4. This not only controls a central square but it allows the White Bishop and Queen to move out of the back or 1st rank.
The next pieces, after the central pawns, to be developed are the Knights. The Knight has the ability to jump over the pawns in from of them and go directly into the game. They also have the advantage of being able to position themselves after one move to either defend or attack the central squares. After that comes the Bishops. Many people feel the need to bring the Queen out early but this is a mistake. The reason? Because she is worth 9 points and if your opponent can capture your Queen early, you'll loose a valuable piece that could save you in the middle game and end games (more on them later).
Another strategy is to always move and capture towards the center. That's where most of the action takes place. You also want to move each piece only one time during the opening. Otherwise, you loose tempo or your timing. When trying to control the center of the board, you're in a race against time with your opponent and you want to keep the tempo up and not lose it! There are other rules to keep in mind as well, such as castling early. This makes sense because you want to protect your King early on so you don't have to worry about him while your fighting it out in the center of the board. We'll go over the concepts of the opening again when we concentrate on the opening game. For now keep these ideas in the back of your mind when you play chess.
One last thought: Each time your about to make a move, ask yourself, what does this move accomplish and what do I get out of this move. If your move looses a piece and you gain nothing from it, you've wasted a move. You don't want to waste moves in chess, unless it's a quiet move meant to buy time, but more on that later on. We'll pick up next time on the opening and some tactics for gaining control of the central squares. Until then, enjoy the game!
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